The economy is mixed, including art and natural resources, primarily logging and commercial fishing. Furthermore, service industries and government jobs provide about one-third of the jobs, and tourism has become a more prominent part of the economy in recent years, especially for fishing and tour guides, cycling, camping, and adventure tourism. Aboriginal culture tourism has been enhanced with the establishment of the Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay Ilnygaay.

Public education is provided through School District 50 Haida Gwaii, which operates elementary and secondary schools in Masset, Port Clements, Queen Charlotte, Sandspit, and Skidegate. Higher education programs are offered at the Haida Heritage Centre in partnership with the University of Northern British Columbia and with the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society.[9]

Publicly funded health services are provided by Northern Health, the regional health authority responsible for the northern half of the province.

The existing Queen Charlotte General Hospital was built in 1953 and opened in 1955. Its size is approximately 1670 square metres (18,000 square feet). In 2013, construction started on the same site for a $50 million, two-storey replacement hospital, approximately 5,000 square metres (54,000 square feet). Construction of the new Queen Charlotte/Haida Gwaii Hospital will be cost-shared by the province and the North West Regional Hospital District. It will open in 2015.[10]

Haida Gwaii has four British Columbia Ambulance Service stations, staffed by 36 part-time paramedics. The first full-time paramedic was hired after the controversial death in 2014 of Godfrey Williams, a Skidegate band councillor, who died from a heart attack after waiting for more than an hour for an ambulance to arrive from a station 10 minutes away. The issue resulted in a review of ambulance services for Haida Gwaii by BC Emergency Health Services.[11]

At the time of colonial contact, the population was roughly 10,000 people, residing in several towns and including slave populations drawn from other clans of Haida as well as other tribes. It is estimated that ninety percent of the population died during the 1800s from smallpox; other diseases arrived as well, including typhoid, measles, and syphilis, affecting many more inhabitants.

By 1900, only 350 people remained. Towns were abandoned as people left their homes for the towns of Skidegate and Masset, for cannery towns on the mainland, or for Vancouver Island. Today, only some 4500[12] people live on the islands. About 70% of the indigenous people (Haida) live in two communities at Skidegate and Old Massett, with a population of about 700 each. In total the Haida make up 45% of the population of the islands.

Haida Gwaii is considered by scientists as an option for a Pacific coastal route taken by the first humans migrating to the Americas from the Bering Strait.[14]

It is unclear how people arrived on Haida Gwaii; but archaeological sites have established human habitation on the islands as far back as 13,000 years ago,[15]

Underwater archaeologists are seeking to confirm that stone structures discovered in 2014 on the seabed of Hecate Strait may date back 13,700 or more years ago and be the earliest known signs of human habitation in Canada.[14]

The group of people inhabiting these Islands developed a culture made rich by the abundance of the land and sea. These people became the Haida. The Haida were a matriarchal society - the women made the decisions prior to European contact. The Haida are a linguistically distinct group, and they have a complex class and rank system consisting of two main clans: Eagles and Ravens.

Links and diversity within the Haida Nation was gained through a cross lineal marriage system between the clans. This system was also important for the transfer of wealth within the Nation, with each clan reliant on the other for the building of longhouses, the carving of totem poles and other items of cultural importance.

Noted seafarers, the Haida occupied more than 100 villages throughout the Islands. The Haida were skilled traders, with established trade links with their neighboring First Nations on the mainland and farther afield. The Haida had a stable existence and vibrant culture at the time of European contact.

The archipelago was visited by Europeans in 1774 by Juan Pérez, at Langara Island,[16] and in 1778 by James Cook. In 1794, the Haida captured and sank a pair of European vessels, Ino and Resolution, that were seeking to trade for sea otter pelts.[17] Most of the ships' crew were killed. In 1851, the Haida captured the Georgiana, a ship carrying gold prospectors, and held its crew for ransom for nearly two months.[18]

The islands played an important role during the maritime fur trade era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During most of that era the trade in the islands was dominated by Americans.[19] The Oregon Treaty of 1846 put an end to American claims to the islands. Following the discovery of gold in the 1850s the British made efforts to exclude whatever American territorial claims might remain.[20]

The northern Pacific Northwest Coast, showing the position of the archipelago in relation to other islands in the region. The southern half of Prince of Wales Island is Kaigani Haida territory, but is not included in the term Haida Gwaii.

The name Haida Gwaii is a modern coinage and was created in the early 1980s as an alternative to the colonial-era name "Queen Charlotte Islands", to recognize the history of the Haida people.[3] "Haida Gwaii" means "islands of the people", while "Haida" on its own means not only "us" but also "people". On December 11, 2009, the BC government announced that legislation would be introduced in mid-2010 to officially rename the Queen Charlotte Islands as Haida Gwaii. The legislation received Royal assent on June 3, 2010, formalizing the name change.[3] This name change is officially recognized by all levels of Canadian governments,[21] and also by the United States' National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency name database.[22]

Still in use is the older name "Xaadala Gwayee" or, in alternative orthography, "Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai", meaning "islands at the boundary of the world".[3] "Xhaaydla" ("worlds") refers here to the sea and sky.[4]

The last Pleistoceneglaciation receded from the archipelago about 16,000 BCE, about 2,000 years earlier than the rest of the British Columbia Coast's ice age. That, and its subsequent isolation from the mainland, encouraged Haida and environmental activists in the 1970s to use the term "Galapagos of the North", a unique biocultural zone with many endemic plants and animals. The climate of this temperate north hemisphere forested region, like that of much of the British Columbia and Alaskan coast in the area, is moderated by the North Pacific Current, with heavy rainfall and relatively mild temperatures throughout the year.

Soils are variable. Peat is common in poorly drained flats and even on sloping ground in the wetter areas. Where drainage is good, the mature soils are podzols which have classic development (well defined eluvial horizon, Ae under Canadian classification) in undisturbed areas.[24] A history of disturbance, as from logging, sees the Ae mixed with other horizons and only patchily visible.[25]Kiidk'yaas (Golden Spruce), a naturally occurring genetic-variant yellow-colour Sitka spruce tree, was near the Yakoun River, the largest on Graham Island. It was a popular tourist attraction until it was illegally cut down in 1997 as a protest against the industrial logging practices.

From the spring of 1996 until November 30, 1997 a popular attraction for tourists to the islands was the male albino 'White Raven'. He lived around Port Clements and would commonly be seen taking food handouts from locals and visitors alike. He died after making contact with an electrical transformer. The White Raven was preserved by former Port Clements residents, taxidermists Roger Britten Sr. and Jr., and is on display in the Port Clements Historical Society's museum.[26]

The climate ranges from oceanic (Cfb) in the south to subpolar oceanic (Cfc) in the north and is very similar to the climate of the west coast of Scotland in terms of average temperatures and precipitation.

Temperatures are moderate year round, whilst rainfall is generally heavy especially in the autumn months, when in the most exposed southwestern areas near Tasu daily rainfalls as high as 317 millimetres (12.5 in) have been recorded, and the annual rainfalls are among the highest in the world outside the tropics.[citation needed]

In July 2012, entrepreneur Russ George dispersed 100 short tons (91 t) of iron sulphate dust into the Pacific Ocean several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii. The Old Massett Village Council was persuaded to finance this geoengineering project as a salmon enhancement project with $1 million in village funds.[28] The concept was that the formerly iron-deficient waters would produce more phytoplankton that would in turn produce more salmon. George hoped to finance the project by using the carbon sequestration effects of the new plankton as marketable carbon offsets. The project has been plagued by charges of unscientific procedures and recklessness. George contended that 100 tons of iron is negligible compared to what naturally enters the ocean.[29]

Lawyers, environmentalists, and civil society groups are calling the dumping a "blatant violation" of two international moratoriums.[28][30] George said that the Old Massett Village Council and its lawyers approved the effort and at least seven Canadian agencies were aware of it.[29]

The islands are located along the Queen Charlotte Fault, an active transform fault that produces significant earthquakes every 3–30 years. This is the result of the converging of the Pacific and North American Plates along the archipelago's west coast.[31] Major earthquakes have occurred in the Haida Gwaii in 1949 and 2012. Though the region is prone to fair geological activity, there is little infrastructure set up to gather accurate information to warn locals of possible threats. Many residents, notably from First Nations communities, have been critical of the fact that they must rely on information coming from neighboring American states such as Washington or Alaska and from the USGS (United States Geological Survey). Regardless of the inconsistencies, Environment Canada does regularly do field tests across the Pacific coast of British Columbia relating to this matter.

The Cascadia subduction zone does pose some additional earthquake risks, but most importantly the subduction zone poses direct tsunami risks to the coastal settlements on the western side of the islands.

The artwork known as Spirit of Haida Gwaii, by Bill Reid, is featured on the reverse of Canadian $20 bills produced between 2004 and 2011.[32] It depicts a Haida chief in a canoe, accompanied by the mythic messengers Raven, Frog and Eagle (the first casting of this sculpture, Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Black Canoe, is on display in the atrium of the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC, the other, Spirit of Haida Gwaii: the Jade Canoe, is on display in Vancouver Airport). Haida art is also frequently seen on large monumental-sized cedar totem poles and dugout canoes, hand-crafted gold and silver jewellery, and even as cartoons in the form of Haida manga.

The Haida language was proposed for classification as part of the Nadene family of languages on the basis of a few similarities with Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit. Many linguists, however, consider the evidence insufficient and continue to regard Haida as a language isolate. All 50 remaining speakers of Haida are over 70 years old. Telus and Gwaii Trust recently completed a project to bring broadband internet to the island via a 150 km (93 mi) microwave relay. This enables interactive research to be carried out on the more than 80 CDs of language, story and spoken history of the people.

Haida Gwaii has been featured in The Nature of Things documentaries since the 1970s due to its unique forest and ecosystem. Many wildlife and adventure tourism TV series (in the US and Canada) have also featured the islands since the 1990s, reflecting the islands as a globe trekking location.

Although Canadian sitcoms and comedians have made fun of the island chain due to its environmental connections since the 1970s, no Canadian television series (or film) has been placed there.

There is one web video blog relating to living on the island[33]—mainly being 'off grid'.